Uncoupling
The husband was thinking of moving on. The wife didn’t know yet. He was unhappy. He tossed and turned in their East Village walkup. It was just all so stifling. The big old labradoodle and the adorable funky children and the smart and successful wife. It wasn’t the life he envisaged for himself. Or rather it was and then it wasn’t. He longed for a quiet professorship, in the Midwest perhaps, but in a very small town. He could live out his decades there, happily, move on to his next life. The reality of this one had broken down. But the wife still laughed her throaty intellectual laugh, planted kisses all round, embarked in her schooner, unaware of the dreams and frustrations of her kayaking husband, who waited for the first eddy, establishing momentum to turn.
The husband was thinking of moving on. The wife didn’t know yet. He was unhappy. He tossed and turned in their East Village walkup. It was just all so stifling. The big old labradoodle and the adorable funky children and the smart and successful wife. It wasn’t the life he envisaged for himself. Or rather it was and then it wasn’t. He longed for a quiet professorship, in the Midwest perhaps, but in a very small town. He could live out his decades there, happily, move on to his next life. The reality of this one had broken down. But the wife still laughed her throaty intellectual laugh, planted kisses all round, embarked in her schooner, unaware of the dreams and frustrations of her kayaking husband, who waited for the first eddy, establishing momentum to turn.
3 comments:
I like this : it's a different take on the 'reasons he left' pondering. And so well written, of course.
It's nice that it depicted the state of two minds in a relation.
I love the central metaphor of the schooner and the kayak, capturing so vividly the different crafts/bodies we humans can be. Thank you!
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